Tuesday, 11 September 2018

We are an award finalist for 'Best Franchisor' at the BEST Business Women Awards!!!

"I founded Domestic Angels in 2002 providing housework, home help and spring cleaning services into client’s private homes. Believing strongly that domestic cleaning staff deserve as much respect as any other worker, I employed my staff guaranteeing holiday pay, flexible hours arrangements, NI payments, insurance and all the bells which the industry so often doesn’t provide its workers due to being dominated by either the black market or businesses structured as agencies. The evolutionary years were not a smooth ride learning how to be an employer, a recruiter, a salesperson and how to deliver great customer service. In fact, every element of running a small business, including completing the monthly payroll on paper with pencil and rubber. Every bump taught me how to run the business better, to perfect processes, to introduce structure and grow, ultimately resulting in the National Venus Award 2013 for Home Based Business. This life event made me admit that I was, and still am, an entrepreneur and classically unemployable.

These days my industry is both domestic cleaning and the franchise sector, yet my passion is for the same reason, I give people their lives and time back. Our Angels help in homes freeing up time and energy in clients' lives – things like being able to do homework with the kids after a long day at work or using the very little pain free energy they have to be with friends. We offer our Angels the hours and security they need to honour their priorities as parents, carers or students. Our franchisees establish their own home-based businesses allowing the same indulgences. With more and more individuals seeking to establish their own businesses with these values, sharing the message that affordable, well-structured, accessible and proven franchise models are an excellent option is very important to UK PLC.

Domestic Angels Franchising provides a management franchise business that gives budding entrepreneurs their lives and time as well as a tried and tested business framework which they can succeed within with 100% support."

Tuesday, 10 July 2018

A group of students living together in one property for nine months of the academic year is going to take its toll. Even if you and your housemates are the Kim and Aggie of the university, the kind of traffic that runs through a property shared by, say, five people means things like bathrooms and carpets will have seen better days once summer arrives and those tenancies come to an end.

While wear and tear is an acceptable level of decline when it comes to end of tenancy inventories and a mere 1% of tenancies end up in official disputes, 57% of those that do cite cleaning as the cause of the face-off between landlord and tenant.

Essentially, a landlord would be within their rights to expect the property to be handed over in the same condition it was presented in at the start of the agreement.

So, if you were blown away by the level of spotlessness when you moved in, that’s the standard required when you move out. Not at all easy to achieve for DIYers, so maybe it’s time to consider an end of tenancy deep clean?

If there is a note in the tenancy agreement that states your landlord can use part of your deposit for professional cleaning should the property not be acceptable on check-out, you could be faced with losing more of your money than you bargained for.

Indeed, it can be cheaper to look at bringing in the pros prior to that final check-out inventory, avoiding any admin costs associated with landlords forking out for a deep clean.

Moreover, an invoice from a professional cleaning company confirming all the work that has been carried out will carry weight should there be any kind of dispute over the standard of the property at check-out.

Finally, on a personal level, most landlords will genuinely appreciate a student tenant bringing in a professional end of tenancy cleaner and that could mean a glowing reference ahead of the next academic year’s renting.

Wednesday, 18 April 2018

According to a 2017 survey, one in four people now employs a cleaner. That’s quite something, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Gone are the days when having a cleaner was seen as a luxury reserved for wealthy homeowners - for many families, busy with work and life, it’s become a must-have monthly spend.

With that demand comes business success and Domestic Angels’ franchisees are experiencing that for themselves. It really is boom (or perhaps ‘broom’) time for the domestic cleaning industry.

As well as the financial rewards from becoming a Domestic Angels franchisee, the benefit to that much strived-for work / life balance are clear to see.

Our franchisees run their own diaries and manage their own time, meaning something like watching their child’s school sports day is not batted away with the age old ‘I can’t get the time off’ excuse. You can’t put a price on that.

The cleaning industry is worth £24billion a year to the UK economy - yes, £24billion! Who wouldn’t want a slice of that cake?

Friday, 30 March 2018

There was a time when having a cleaner meant one thing: You’d ‘made it’ and were now far too busy and rich to clean your own house!

That view brought with it a degree of difficultly for the home cleaning business and certainly limited our client base largely to the above.

Back in the 1970s, women in particular wouldn’t have dreamed of spending the family’s hard-earned money on hiring someone to clean their home. ‘We don’t need that! I’m perfectly capable of cleaning my own house’, or something along those lines would have been the stock response.

How times have changed!

While Domestic Angels caters for many high net worth individuals alongside our elderly clients, we have seen a rise in millennials yearning for our service.

Research by insurer Esure last year suggested more than half of all millennials were hiring cleaners because they were “too busy” to do it themselves.

And who can blame them? How can you criticise successful young people for wishing to spend their time ‘living’ rather than cleaning?

Life is for living, after all, and we all value our time perhaps more than we ever have before. Having a cleaner can provide that work/life balance we all strive for and, for Domestic Angels, this is part of our very fabric.

Indeed, our home-based management franchise, as well our cleaning and home help services, provides the opportunity to find that balance between working hard yet having enough time for the things that truly matter.

Tuesday, 27 March 2018

The appointment of a Minister for Loneliness, Tracey Crouch MP, came almost four years after a study from charity Friends of the Elderly revealed more than five million older people go weeks without speaking to a single person.

Better late than never, of course, yet the monumental issue of social isolation in the elderly is showing no signs of abating, with that five million figure set to rise to seven million by 2030, according to Friends of the Elderly.

Moreover, the south and south west of the UK came out worse in the 2014 survey - with a quarter of all people over 60 classed as lonely.

At Domestic Angels, we have witnessed the problems associated with social isolation first hand. Many of our customers fall into the demographic outlined by the Friends of the Elderly study and, in some cases, our Angels are the only people those customers see each week.

Cleaners and home helpers, yes, but our Angels’ roles in the lives of these customers runs much deeper than that.

Social isolation can strike for a whole host of reasons: Getting older or weaker, no longer being the hub of a family or deaths of spouses or friends. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to go from being surrounded by people to being alone in a snapshot.

Many older people who are lonely may also find it hard to reach out - someone around the age of 75, after all, was raised with that ‘Blitz’ spirit and stiff British upper lip. Older people tend not to ask for help or admit to feeling lonely, they don't want to be a nuisance to anyone.

At Domestic Angels, we place the well-being of our customers at the top of our ‘To-Do’ list.

Thursday, 15 March 2018

The Angels marked the launch of their
new Poole Coast & Harbour operation with a wonderful drinks
reception at Penn Hill nightspot Jenkins & Sons.

Franchisee Charlotte Waldron welcomed
the Angels family and the great and the good of Poole, Bournemouth and
Christchurch to the popular venue for wine, canapés and celebration.

Among the guests were Samantha Acton,
founder of Domestic Angels, and franchisees Deb Broomfield and Hazel
Burnett, who were joined by Simon Scarborough of hospitality experts
Simon Scarborough Associates, Martin Spooner
of Invest Dorset, Lord Stephen Young of Westbury, Dorset Chamber of
Commerce and Industry President Paul Tansey, Nigel Soloman, chief
executive of Bennington Green, and a host of clients and friends of the
company.

Samantha said: “It’s always an exciting
time welcoming a new franchisee to the family and it was a wonderful
celebration at the Poole Coast & Harbour launch night.

“I’d like to thank Jenkins & Sons
for laying on such a superb spread and Simon Scarborough for ensuring
our guests were topped up!”

Charlotte added: “I’m so excited to be
embarking on this journey with Domestic Angels as a new franchisee and
it was amazing to see so many people come out to support me and
celebrate my new venture.”

Saturday, 10 March 2018

Domestic Angels founder Samantha Acton has joined the likes
of Samantha Cameron, Baroness Karren Brady and MPs Harriet Harman and Nicky
Morgan and top business owners Kelly Hoppen, Kath Kidston and Jacqueline Gold
in signing the Daily Telegraph's open letter urging the government to back
female entrepreneurship in the UK.

Samantha founded Domestic Angels in 2002 and the company now
boasts 20 staff supporting around 130 clients across Bournemouth, Christchurch
and Poole.

The business was franchised by Samantha in 2016 as a
flexible home-based management solution.

The Telegraph's open letter was published in the broadsheet
newspaper on International Women's Day today (March 8) and claims female
entrepreneurs are being held back, with just nine per cent of funding into UK
start-ups currently going to female-fronted businesses annually.

Samantha said: "It's hard to believe that, in 2018, entrepreneurial women continue to be held back by a lack of funding. There is huge disparity still between access to funding for women when compared with men and I'm delighted to be able to do my bit in backing the Telegraph's stance.

"It's never been more important for the UK government to back business and entrepreneurship in the UK, particularly with Brexit on the horizon and now is the time for the gap in funding between sexes to be a thing of the past."

The letter was printed and released to government as part of
the Telegraph's 'Women Mean Business' campaign, which aims to close the funding
gap preventing many women from starting their own businesses.